A Challenging Role for Organic Rabbit Production Towards Poverty Alleviation in South East Asia

This paper addresses the challenging role of organic rabbit production applied towards poverty alleviation. The objective of the paper is to provide information on organic rabbit production with applications to food security and income generation. Rabbits are easily incorporated into integrated farming systems as they convert plant materials, which often are of low nutritive value, to high quality meat, as well as providing faeces whereby nutrients are returned to the soil. Fresh faeces from rabbits can be the raw material for biodigesters used to produce gas and effluent for applying to crops, and for use by earthworms for production of casings are a source of organic fertilizer. In general, the linkage between livestock and crops improves the sustainability of the farming system. The potential of locally feed resources has been used successfully for growing rabbits as an alternate feed supply in terms of cost effectiveness and sustainability. These feed resources can be cultivated in the farmers’ plots to provide diets with high contents of digestible energy and protein without the need for cash resources to buy off-farm supplemental feeds. Feed sources from forages, vegetables and aquatic plants (e.g., Cassava, Mulberry, Leucaena, Gliricidia, Sweet Potato vines, Water Spinach, and Stylo) can be used in diets to replace or in combination with a protein source from conventional feed ingredients (soybean and fish meals). Therefore, poor families with limited resources could benefit through increased income and increased consumption of rabbit meat to meet the families’ nutritional needs. Farmers can also re-invest their capital to expand their rabbit operation as a means to abandon poverty, but an emphasis on market accessibility and creating a high consumer demand for rabbit meat must also be developed.